The name Seton is said to derive from the village of Sai in Normandy
although other explanations have been suggested (eg. from Tranent, a "sea-town",
an area owned by the Setons). Alexander Seton witnessed a charter of David I about 1150.
His descendant Sir Alexander Seton joined Sir Glbert Hay and Sir Neil Campbell in
defending the rights of Robert the Bruce and was later one of the signatories at the
Declaration of Arbroath. Sir Christoper, his son married Christina, Bruce's sister. He is
renowned for saving the King's life at Methven when he was unhorsed, but was later to lose
his life when he was captured and hanged in London. The male line failed with an heiress,
Margaret Seton, who married Alan Winton (after being abducted by him) and their son
William took the name Seton and became Lord Seton of Tranent. Alexander, his second son
married Elizabeth, heiress of Sir Adam Gordon and their son, Alexander became 1st Earl of
Huntly. Of the main family, George, 5th Lord Seton supported Queen Mary of Lorraine
against the Lords of the Congregation and was Master of the Household after Mary Queen of
Scots returned to Scotland. He was responsible for the Palace of Seton which became a
frequent home to Mary Queen of Scots, it was there she and Bothwell went after Darnley's
murder and here their marriage contract was signed. His sister Mary Seton was one of the
Queen's Marys and he was one of those who waited for Mary on the banks of Loch Leven when
she escaped in 1568. His eldest son, Robert, 6th Lord was created Earl of Winton in 1600
and his younger son was later Chancellor of Scotland and was created Lord Fyvie in 1597
and then Earl of Dunfermline in 1605. He built much of the famous Fyvie castle in
Aberdeenshire. George, 5th Earl of Winton joined the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 and was
captured and sentenced to death, he escaped from the Tower of London and fled to Rome.
James, 4th Earl of Dunfermline was also forfeited his estates and title as a Jacobite when
he commanded a troop of horse under Viscount Dundee at the Battle of Killiecrankie in
1689. The earldom moved to the Setons of Garleton and then onto the Seton-Broadbent
family. The earldom is now dormant.

A topographical name, said to mean
"sea town", which came to be attached to the shipping magnates who mastered the
medieval North Sea. The word has several variant spellings such as Seytoune and Seaton,
the last form being the oldest. It derived not from Scotland but from the north-east coast
of England, notably Durham where there are five places so called, and Northumberland where
there are eight. Yorkshire has two named Seatons and a third – actually the most
important of them all – which has nowadays lost that designation. The small harbour
village of Staithes, nine miles north of Whitby, was in the 11th century called Seaton
Staithes. It was an important place, private if not secret to its users, hidden in a cleft
in the cliffs and extremely difficult of access. As the old name indicates, it was a
stronghold for the Seatons. Seaton Quay is at the safest point in the harbour, and Seaton
Hall has stood for many centuries at the top of the cliff directly above it.

After Domesday but before the end of the 11th century the family name had been drawn
inland, most portentously to Rutland, where at the new manor of Seaton the Lady Maud de
Lens and her sister Alice were spending the betrothal period before their marriages.
Maud’s Scottish son, Prince Henry, would pass the name to Seaton, Cumbria, where he
established a cell of his abbey at Holmcultram. Earlier than either of these moves, it
went to the Firth of Forth where Queen Maud’s premier Flemish relative, her uncle
Seier "de Seton" built his great palace for the protection of herself and her
heirs.

Like so many other pedigrees, the Norman origin offered for the Seton family is
careless nonsense. The name was said to be made up from "the town of the Say".
William de Say, son of the Conqueror’s companion of the same name, married a sister
of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, and took the Mandeville arms of quartered gold
and red. There is no possible connection with the Setons - except that William de Say was
lord of Hamme, in West Flanders, probably through his Flemish wife, and his arms were in
the tinctures of Boulogne.

As their own distinctive crescents show, Seier de Seton and his brother Walter sprang
from a second son of the house of Boulogne. Known in their Flemish homeland as Seier and
Walter de Lens, they were sons of Count Eustace’s second son, Count Lambert de Lens,
whose daughter by a second marriage (to the sister of William the Conqueror) was the
Countess Judith, mother of Scotland’s Queen Maud. Seier’s eldest son, Walter de
Lens, or Walter the Fleming as he is described in Domesday, had his chief English home at
Wahull (now called Odell) in Bedfordshire. On the Firth of Forth, as heir there of his
father, Seier, he was called Dougall or "the dark stranger", a nickname which
was also given to his own son Walter, and duly recorded by the family’s first
official chronicler, Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, in 1554.

In both Scotland and Bedfordshire, and no doubt in the lost Yorkshire home of the
family, Seier de Lens (or Seier de Seton) and his descendants kept as princely an
establishment as they had enjoyed in Flanders – a fact attested by a curious
documentary survival. As if he had been a king, Walter de Wahull had tenants-in-chief,
each with his own tenants. The terms these courtiers enjoyed on his estates at Odell are
known, and although the relevant Scottish documents have not survived, it is certain that
the Seton tenants on the Firth of Forth had been given similar privileges. The Victoria
County History for Bedfordshire records, not without astonishment, the fairy-tale rents
paid by Walter’s knightly tenants in that county as "a rose, an arrow, a handful
of rushes, capons, wax, a pair of gloves …" Lesser tenants paid more; the
cottager William Prikeavant provided a hooded falcon, while Walter le Sergeaunt, keeper of
the park at Odell Castle, held his cottage by the service of twelve arrows. At the
neighbouring Little Odell Manor, whose Domesday tenant-in-chief was Walter’s
great-uncle, Count Eustace II of Boulogne, the tenancies granted to Eustace’s own
attendant knights were similar, "a garland of roses, a bundle of rushes, a cake of
wax …"

One Scottish tenancy tradition which has survived concerns the Tower at Tranent, which
was held of the crown first by de Quincy and then by Seton; it had for payment that most
magical of rentals, a rose in midwinter, a snowball in midsummer. The trust implicit in
these terms of tenancy was of the same kind as that loyalty which would bind Seton to
Scotland, to their cousin Maud and her descendants so long as they sat on the Scottish
throne. It was a loyalty which would last unbroken to the disasters of the Fifteen and the
Forty-five.Beryl Platts ("Scottish Hazard" vol 1, The Procter Press, 1985)

Of the Seton family The Great Historic Families Of Scotland says: ‘The Setons are
among the most illustrious of the great houses of Scotland, conspicuous throughout their
whole history for their loyalty and firm attachment to the Stewart dynasty, in whose cause
they perilled and lost their titles and extensive estates.’ The family’s
founder, Seier de Seton (or de Lens), had been granted lands in East Lothian to which he
gave his own name. His son, Walter de Seton (also called Dougall), married Janet de
Quincy, hieress of that once powerful family, and gained the lands of Tranent bordering
his own. He also acquired the lands of Wynchburgh, West Lothian. The family continued to
marry into powerful alliances and later Sir Christopher Seton (Sir Chrystell) married
Christian Bruce, sister of Robert the Bruce. After his legendary support of his
brother-in-law he was captured by the English, taken to London, then executed at Dumfries.
One of his brothers, Sir John Seton, shared the same fate. Alexander Seton, Sir
Christophers son, survived the wars of independence to be a signatory of the Arbroath
Declaration. He also was a recipient of King Robert’s gratitude towards the family:
the existing Seton lands were enlarged by means of adding those confiscated from
anglo-supporters, and a large stretch of East Lothian coastline became Seton territory.

The family continued to play a distinguished and colourful part in the developing
history of Scotland, marrying into other noble Scots-Flemish families and from time to
time into the fringes of royalty. One interesting member of the main line was the fourth
Lord Seton, who was one of James IV’s Renaissance men par excellence. Towards the end
of the fifteenth century he endowed a collegiate church in the small town that bears his
name with support for a provost, six prebendaries, two choir boys and a clerk. He was an
early scientist and is described as ‘meikle given to leichery [medicine, not
lustfulness], and as cunning in divers science as in music, theology, and astronomy’.
In addition to his talent for learning he had a tremendous taste for extravagance,
building houses as well as his church. As well, he spent vast sums of money on buying a
great ship called the Eagle, for the sole purpose of conducting a personal vendetta
against some Danish privateers who had plundered him on one of his many visits to France.

George, sixth Lord Seton, was twice married. His second wife, Marie Pyeris (pronounced
Pee-yair-ee), was one of the ladies-in-waiting who had accompanied Mary of Guise from
France on her marriage to King James V. The family of Guise, influential in France, was
also a descendant of those once prominent Flemish-Boulognaise. His daughter by this second
marriage was the famed Mary Seton, one of the four Mary’s of Mary Stuart, Queen of
Scots. He was succeeded by his son, George, who was to play a distinguished part in the
Queen’s affairs.

George, seventh Lord Seton, was one of the commisioners appointed to attend the young
Mary Stuart’s marriage to the Dauphin of France in 1557. He remained faithful to the
old Catholic religion, but not without interest in the reformation; as a young man he had
been following the progress of the new religion and even attended a sermon by John
Willock, from the preachers deathbed. However his remaining within the Church of Rome kept
him inside the close party of the Queen. In 1559 he held the office of Provost of
Edinburgh, and after the Queen’s return from France, he was appointed Grand Master of
the Royal Household. It was at the home of the Seton family that Queen Mary spent some of
the crucial moments of her short and troubled reign.

The seventh Lord was to the fore in most of the events during Mary Stuart’s reign:
in March 1566 she rode to Seton after the murder of her Italian secretary, David Riccio
(Rizzio); the following year again she was at Seton after the murder of her 2nd husband
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (they having spent their honeymoon at Seton); and he was
instrumental in arranging her escape from captivity at Lochleven Castle in 1568, where he
waited on the shore and escorted the Queen to safety at his nearby castle of Niddry with
two hundred mounted lances. Following the defeat of the Queen’s forces at the battle
of Langside, his titles and estates forfeit, he went into exile in Flanders. He returned
sometime after her imprisonment (having come close to being imprisoned himself for trying
to bring aid from Flanders) and was restored by James VI, spending the remainder of his
days as ambassador to France.

The Seton family was again at the cause of the Stuarts, playing a part in the rescue of
Queen Mary’s son, the then young James VI, from captivity at the hands of the Douglas
family. They were also instrumental in the negotiations for James VI’s ascendency to
the English throne. The Eighth Lord Seton was duly created First Earl of Winton by King
James VI in 1600, and his brother Alexander rose to be Chancellor of Scotland and Earl of
Dunfermline. The family also supported Kings Charles I and Charles II. As fervent
supporters of the Stuart dynasty, it is no surprise that they took to the Jacobite causes,
and were attainted and forfeit of their lands and titles. It was to this end that they
climaxed their extraordinary history.

The Seton family’s chief residence was at the splendid Palace of Seton. It had
stood on the lands named after the family since before the time David I. The lands of
Seton took their name from the estates which were formally held in England; principally
Seaton-Staithes, Yorkshire. The old Palace of Seton had endured much destruction and
rebuilding over the centuries, being much destroyed because of its proximity on the main
invasion route from England. It had however kept its original layout and French styling
throughout its existence. The original plan was based around a triangular (actually a
quadrangle) courtyard, described late in the seventeeth century as follows:

‘The house consisted of two large fronts of freestone, and in the middle is a
triangular court. The front to the south east hath a very noble apartment of a Hall, a
Drawing Room, a handsome Parlour, Bedchamber, Dressing Room and closet. This apartment
seems to have been built in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; for on the ceiling of the
Great Hall are plastered the Arms of Scotland, with the Arms of France on one
hand…the front to the North seems to be a much older building than this. The
apartments of the state are on the second story, and very spacious; three great rooms, at
least forty feet high, which they say were finely furnished, ever since Mary Queen of
Scots, on her return from France, kept her apartments there.’

The current Seton House, constructed 1790 by Alexander MacKenzie, has nothing in common
with its predessesor, having not been constructed by a member of the family, nor designed
by a relative. The sole remaining fragments of the Palace being only the barrel-vaulted
ground floor and pieces of the foundation. There were many plendid Seton residences, among
which were: Niddry Castle, Wynchburgh; Winton House, Pencaitland; Greenknowe Tower, East
Lothian; Pinkie House, Mid-Lothian; Fyvie Castle, Aberdeen; Garleton Castle (now ruined),
East Lothian; Barnes Castle (formerly ruined, now completely altered), East Lothian;
Falside Castle (restored and altered), East Lothian; Mounie Castle, Aberdeen; and
Pittmedden Castle and Gardens, Aberdeen

Here are line drawings of the old Palace of Seton made in 1790 prior to its
destruction. They were originally created for private publication for the Maitland Club,
at the turn of the 18th century. They have been published in the U.S. over the course of
this century several times, but were first published publically in 1899 by ArchBishop
Robert Seton of New York, descended from the Parbroath branch of the family.

Kenneth R. Seton, 1996.(Excerps taken from ‘Mary Stuart’s Scotland’, by
David and Judy Steel, 1987.)

The Seatons have been here since the 1700's. The
family has very extensive records of names and dates that have been passed down thru
generations. I am a friend of the Seaton family and am very close to Elsie Hart Seaton
Purvis. She is the former Elsie Hart Seaton Fielder. Seaton being her mothers maiden name.
Her middle name Hart was passed to her from ancestor John Hart (signature on United States
Declaration of Independence) He was also a descend from Scotland. There are letters stating
the change of spelling of the family name.( Seaton, Seton, Seyton ) The family
castle was somewhere 14 miles from Edinburgh but I don't know which direction. Elsie has
an extremely old coat of arms that can barely be read. It was made from a metallic plate
brought from Scotland. The spelling of the name is S-e-a-t-o-n. She is interested in
sharing her information and also learning more. The family is anxious for someone to visit
your country ( possibly Elsie's son Johnny and myself ) I personally would like to have
some contacts first. It would be wonderful for the family to finally find relatives after
all these years. I am engaged to marry her son and we have talked of coming to Scotland on
our "Honeymoon". My people are from Pembrokeshire Wales (1700's). Please, please
contact us. We have alot of information of the past to share and we would like to learn
the where abouts of the family now. Contact me through this E-mail address detailed above.

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